10 April 2009

friday on my mind

That'll be Good Friday, of course.

Traditionally a slow news day - the old man used to go bananas because it was the one day of the year when no newspaper thudded onto the front lawn - allow me to give you some peeks into alternative worlds.

And I'd started a post last night on the story of the innocent passer-by in the environs of the G20 summit who got pummelled by the rozzers and then had a heart attack. The London rozzers have some form here, of course, but incremental increases to police and more broadly based coercive powers - think application of supposed anti-terrorist legislation to safeguard investments (stupidly high risk investments) in Iceland, that sent the country bankrupt.

The special legislation that gets introduced for one-off events - economic summits, visits by Daddy Goodspeak (interpretation here) - but somehow remains on the statute books so people can be cleared off the streets without any good reason. Think back to Joh days. And don't get me started on the so-called "anti-hooning" laws now in place around Australia. Where if you accelerate from rest to the legal speed limit in anything under 4 hours, you're "hooning" and you lose your car.

Stone the crows, how did we get here? That's not a peek into anything but some of my various obsessions. I see the rozzer in question has been stood down, there's talk of a police cover-up (oh really, that's novel), you wonder how the family feels - they have been far more reticent in their grief than those who even turn their own tragedies into 15 minutes of fame.

More relevant, the talking heads on the morning TV show report that sales of science fiction are soaring. Most appropriate for today. Also there's a brand new ab crunch machine that will render all your old ab crunch machines obsolete. Fortunately it folds away to store under the bed, unfortunately there's no room under the bed because that's where all the old ab crunch machines are. In fact there's so many of them, there's no room for communists (Redgum joke). Anyway, better slip away to do something, or nothing. Yep, slip away. You can too. Enjoy. (Note: should be safe for Laurie).